Danh Vo
Shove it up your ass, you faggot, 2015
Oak and polychrome Madonna and child, French early-Gothic 1280-1320; marble torso of Apollo, Roman workshop, 1st-2nd century AD; steel
154.2 × 50 × 50 cm
The title for this sculptural collage comes from William Friedkin’s seminal horror film The Exorcist (1973). It is a line spoken by the Demon to a priest whilst the evil entity is possessing a young girl. After Danh Vo’s family left Vietnam as refugees and settled in Denmark when he was just four years old, his Catholic mother developed a tendency to watch horror films. Not wanting to endure the suspense alone, it became a family activity to sit around the television to watch these films together. Vo first saw The Exorcist aged seven, so it is perhaps unsurprising that it left a lasting impression on him.
There are two more of these sculptures which use the same chopped-up early Gothic oak Madonna and child figurine fused together with chopped-up marble body parts. Their titles, Your mother sucks cocks in hell (2015) and Dimmy, why you do this to me? (2015) are also lines taken from The Exorcist. One of the self-confessed reasons Vo uses these quotes is taking secret juvenile delight at the idea that art professionals would have to repeat these phrases to prospective buyers.1 On a more serious note, all three works show how conflicting interests can be present in the same person: there are mis-matched body parts made of different materials from disparate eras, put together as one. Similarly, the possessed girl in the film becomes a conduit for both evil and truth. These ideas speak to more personal experiences too — Vo’s Catholic upbringing, sexual identity and close relationship with his family. Vo’s dad is in fact the calligrapher for his work and has agreed to keep reproducing until his death.
1 Jörg Heiser, 'Exorcism of the Self', Frieze Magazine, issue 171, May 2015